A Single Conscience v. the State

Bob Herbert

Katharine Gun has a much better grasp of the true spirit of democracy than
Tony Blair. So, naturally, it's Katharine Gun who's being punished.

Ms. Gun, 29, was working at Britain's top-secret Government Communications
Headquarters last year when she learned of an American plan to spy on at
least a half-dozen U.N. delegations as part of the U.S. effort to win Security
Council support for an invasion of Iraq.

The plans, which included e-mail surveillance and taps on home and office
telephones, was outlined in a highly classified National Security Agency
memo. The agency, which was seeking British assistance in the project, was
interested in "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers
an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals."

Countries specifically targeted were Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea
and Pakistan. The primary goal was a Security Council resolution that would
give the U.S. and Britain the go-ahead for the war.

Ms. Gun felt passionately that an invasion of Iraq was wrong  morally
wrong and illegal. In a move that deeply embarrassed the American and British
governments, the memo was leaked to The London Observer.

Which landed Ms. Gun in huge trouble. She has not denied that she was involved
in the leak.

There is no equivalent in Britain to America's First Amendment protections.
Individuals like Ms. Gun are at the mercy of the Official Secrets Act, which
can result in severe  in some cases, draconian  penalties for
the unauthorized disclosure of information by intelligence or security agency
employees.

Ms. Gun was fired from her job as a translator and arrested for violating
the act. If convicted, she will face up to two years in prison.

We are not talking about a big-time criminal here. We are not talking about
someone who would undermine the democratic principles that <alt-code
idsrc="nyt-per-pol" value="Bush, George W"/>George W. Bush and Tony Blair
babble about so incessantly, and self-righteously, even as they are trampling
on them. Ms. Gun is someone who believes deeply in those principles and was
willing to take a courageous step in support of her beliefs.

She hoped that her actions would help save lives. She thought at the time
that if the Security Council did not vote in favor of an invasion, the United
States and Britain might not launch the war. In a statement last November
she said she felt that leaking the memo was "necessary to prevent an illegal
war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed
or maimed."

"I have only ever followed my conscience," she said.

In 1971, in what the historian William Manchester described as "perhaps the
most extraordinary leak of classified documents in the history of governments,"
Daniel Ellsberg turned over to The New York Times a huge study of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. The
Nixon administration tried to destroy Mr. Ellsberg. He was viciously harassed.
His psychiatrist's office was burglarized. And he was charged with treason,
theft and conspiracy.

The prosecution was not successful. The charges were thrown out due to government
misconduct. In an interview last week, Mr. Ellsberg, who was with the Defense
Department and the Rand Corporation in the 1960's and 70's, told me he wished
he had blown the whistle much earlier on the deceptions and lies and other
forms of official misconduct related to Vietnam.

He is lending his name to a campaign in support of Ms. Gun. She took a principled
stand, he said, early enough to have a chance at altering events.

"What I've been saying since a year ago last October," said Mr. Ellsberg,
"was that I hoped that people who knew that we were being lied into a wrongful
war would do what I wish I had done in 1964 or 1965. And that was to go to
Congress and the press with documents. Current documents. Don't do what I
did. Don't wait years until the bombs are falling and then put out history."

Ms. Gun is being allowed by British courts to plead an unusual "defense of
necessity." She has said that her disclosures were justified because they
revealed "serious wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. government," and because
she was sincerely trying to prevent the "wide-scale death and casualties"
that would result from a war that was "illegal."

NSA relents on files' release

After months of denying regulators access to a key environmental study, the
National Security Agency has opened its doors and its files - if only for
a peek.

Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Maryland Department
of the Environment
<http://www.mde.state.md.us>
and Fort Meade's environmental office got their first look last week at the
super-secret eavesdropping agency's building contamination study, which outlines
potential pollution problems.

NSA is situated on a corner of the Fort Meade Army post in Odenton, which
has been listed since 1998 on the EPA's Superfund list of the nation's most
hazardous sites. Although NSA is not near the main areas of concern, regulators
long have suspected that NSA has handled some hazardous waste over the years.
But their cursory review of the NSA study didn't yield any red flags.

"Based on my brief review, I did not see any regional environmental impacts
resulting from historical operations at the NSA campus," said Fort Meade
environmental engineer Jeffrey Thornburg.

NSA expects to release an edited version of the report to regulators and
the public next month. That version will include the environmental studies,
but not maps, historical data and building function detail that the NSA has
deemed sensitive.

"The study is currently under review to remove information relating to NSA's
plans, operations, and potential security vulnerabilities," an NSA spokeswoman
said last week.

Federal and state regulators will be able to return to NSA and view the full
report if they need more information. Historical data, such as the location
of a wood-treatment facility or computer chip-making operation, might explain
why certain contaminants turn up in certain places. If the edited report
does not answer all such questions, Thornburg said, he'll go back to see
the full version.

For months, the lack of environmental information from the global code-breaking
agency has frustrated regulators and citizens who have been working together
to clean up the 86-year-old Army post.

Over the past five years, the Army's environmental office has identified
close to 200 areas of potential contamination that could cause long-term
ground-water and soil problems, most stemming from fuel, solvents and munitions
dating to the post's years as a major training camp for soldiers. By last
summer, only 30 sites still required further cleanup.

Board and Army

That swift action and exchange of information improved the once-contentious
relations between the Army and the Restoration Advisory Board, the
citizen-regulator group overseeing the Superfund cleanup.

Rather than participating in the Army's study, the NSA conducted its own
in 2002. Last year, NSA officials gave the findings to an EPA representative,
but abruptly took the report back, noting new post-Sept. 11, 2001, security
concerns. NSA said the report revealed too much about its buildings and their
functions.

NSA told The Sun last month that it launched the study at the advisory board's
request and not in response to Superfund requirements. However, EPA officials
considered the pollution study a key part of the regulatory process.

Advisory board Chairwoman Zoe Draughon said the NSA agreed to release the
information only after the news reports circulated and public pressure increased.

"The NSA is releasing the report not because it's the right thing to do,
but because it's being forced to do it," she said. "But at this point, I'll
take anything."

Review by regulators

Draughon said she doesn't need to see the unedited report as long as the
regulators can review it.

"NSA can't check themselves and say, 'Oh, we're OK,'" she said. "They have
to let the people who are supposed to do the checking do their jobs."

Board members hope that the NSA's cooperation is a sign that the agency's
door may be opening more than just a crack. In the past few months, NSA and
Army officials have met more frequently.

"We're bridging any sort of gaps in our relationship," Thornburg said. "This
is really setting the tone for future communication between NSA and Fort
Meade."